People

Erica A. H. Smithwick

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Dr. Erica Smithwick, Distinguished Professor of Geography, is a landscape and ecosystem ecologist. She is the Director of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, and Associate Director of the Institute of Energy and the Environment. Smithwick leads the Penn State Climate Consortium that brings together interdisciplinary researchers in partnership with society to innovate climate solutions. Additionally, she serves as program co-chair for Transdisciplinary Research on Environment and Society. Smithwick is also a former director of the Ecology Institute and the Center for Landscape Dynamics.

Smithwick’s research aims to support sustainable land management decision-making under climate change, with particular focus on forest resilience to wildfire, natural carbon sequestration strategies, and Indigenous knowledge systems. She has worked extensively across the U.S., including in the Mid-Atlantic, western U.S., and Alaska. In addition, Dr. Smithwick and has many past or ongoing research projects in Africa (Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, and Zambia). She served as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in South Africa.

Prior to joining Penn State, Smithwick was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, supervised by Dr. Monica Turner. She received her M.S. in Resource Conservation and Forestry from the University of Montana in Missoula, MT and her Ph.D. from Oregon State University College of Forestry, advised by Dr. Mark Harmon and Warren Cohen. Her undergraduate degree is in Geological Sciences and Environmental Studies from Tufts University.

Smithwick is also one of the Science Moms, connecting parents with information to address climate change in their own communities.

Casey Hamilton

Ph.D. STUDENT

I am a graduate student in the M.S. + Ph.D. program in Penn State’s Department of Geography. Prior to coming to Penn State, I earned my B.S. in Ecology, Evolution, & Natural Resources and Environmental Geomatics from Rutgers University, New Brunswick in 2019. Since then, I have participated in field research at Brookhaven National Laboratory on a project involving remote sensing and crop health, and I also spent several months at the Highstead Foundation in Redding, Conn., working to advance the scale and pace of land protection across New England. These experiences coupled with an undergraduate research project surrounding forest fragmentation and pollination in New Jersey amplified my interests in landscape ecology — particularly surrounding relationships between landscape pattern and ecosystem processes in a changing world — and inspired me to pursue graduate education. My current research project is reflective of these interests, aiming to identify key environmental determinants of berry plant distribution in southern Alaska and to predict change in those patterns of distribution under future climate scenarios.

Mobashsira Tasnim

I am a dual-title PhD candidate in Geography and Transdisciplinary Research on Environment and Society (TREES) at Penn State. I obtained my MS in Geography and Geospatial Science from Kansas State University. My dissertation focuses on understanding the dynamics of wildfire in Northeastern US forest systems. In doing so, I integrate my geospatial and machine learning expertise to uncover the drivers of fire occurrence and fire behavior under extreme weather conditions. Additionally, my research examines the effects of wildfire on these forest systems that contribute to inform management practices that promote resilience and support post-fire recovery.

Eliisa Carter

I am pursuing a dual-title PhD in Geography and Transdisciplinary Research on Environment and Society (TREES) at Pennsylvania State University. I focus on climate change adaptation and environmental governance as it relates to fire in forested landscapes, across public lands and the wildland-urban interface in the United States. I am intrigued by examining our pressing ecological disturbances and human responses to climate risk, particularly fire, in forested landscapes through a social-ecological lens. Previously, I was a research associate at Colorado State University’s Public Lands Policy Group, where I explored how natural resource managers incorporate adaptation concepts, planning processes, tools, and innovations into their sub-disciplines. My previous work also includes consulting within the Adaptation Division at UN Climate Change, and working in urban forestry advocating within the Washington, D.C. metro area. I earned my B.A. in International Studies from American University’s School of International Service in 2016. I received my M.S. in Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change Adaptation from Lund University’s Faculty of Engineering in 2019.

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